


Shifted

by bibliomaniac



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 01:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10206083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliomaniac/pseuds/bibliomaniac
Summary: Milo "Twitch" Anderson has a monumental crush on his best friend K.O. and a creative writing assignment to complete. He figures, why not combine the two?(It really did seem like a good idea at the time.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i present unto you my babies, twitch and k.o., starring in another brin-brand misunderstanding lasagna because that is what i Do
> 
> (what i do not do, apparently, is work on my poor other stories which have been open for months. whoops)

_When I first met him, I was in a garbage can._

_Not all the way, or anything. My arms and legs were sticking out, so that if I got down onto the ground and started crawling around I might look something like a hermit crab._

_Or, you know, like a human stuck in a garbage can. But._

_We stared at each other for a moment—me in the garbage can and him in the ridiculously overdressed getup of an 1800’s valet that I would soon learn was his normal clothing—and all I could think for a moment was, crap, he saw me._

_“Okay, who do I need to beat up?” he asked, voice dangerous._

_I blinked, considering. Finally, I said carefully, “I don’t really think that’s a decision I can make for you.”_

_It was his turn to blink. “What?” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “No, like…who put you in there?”_

_That was an easy question. “Oh,” I said. “Me. I wanted to know how the trash felt.”_

_(As it turns out, if the trash’s and my experience were anything similar, the trash doesn’t feel so excellent, which is a pity. But anyway.)_

_I waited for the Look to come across his face—the ‘oh no, he’s weird’ face that I see so often—but instead he just grinned nervously and said, “You could have just asked me! Ayyyy.” Then he pulled out some finger guns and aimed them in my direction._

_I looked at the finger guns, then back up at him. His grin dropped as time passed without a comment from me, and eventually we both looked away from each other._

_“Right,” I heard. “Well.”_

_Realization dawned on me, and I started to laugh, surprised. “You’re funny. I like you.”_

_He turned around—was he heading out without even saying goodbye? That’s not very good manners—and started to turn a light red. Finally, he extended a hand. “I’m K.O.”_

_“I’m Twitch,” I said, looking at his hand with an expression of vague distaste. “I don’t like handshakes.”_

_To his credit, he took that in stride. “Fair enough. What about pizza? What are your pizza feelings?”_

_I paused, confused, and tilted my head. “I like it?”_

_“Excellent. Want to get some?”_

_I took in his hopeful face, his hand tapping nervously on his slacks, and smiled slowly. “Sure.”_

_After getting piz—_

“Hey, Twitch,” I hear from behind me, and I inhale sharply and close the computer. “What? Were you writing porn or something?”

“No,” I say, and I hate how high-pitched my voice sounds, the rapid pounding of my heart. “Not porn.”

“Okay,” K.O. says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even without turning around. “What is it then?”

“Assignment for my creative writing class,” I say, which is the truth. “It’s, uh…a romance of sorts.” Also true, but I’m leaving out that it’s about my hopeless, ridiculous, obviously unrequited crush on him. He really, really doesn’t need to know that.

“Oh, so you were embarrassed about that?” 

“Yyyyyes.” 

He grins and ruffles my hair, which he does all the time. “You’re adorable.”

“Stop saying that,” I grumble, wrinkling my nose. “You sound like my great-aunt.”

“Ow.” He mimes being stabbed in the heart. “Can’t I just sound like your best friend, who loves you?”

He does that a lot too—says he loves me. It kind of hurts knowing he doesn’t mean it like I want, but at the same time I appreciate the sentiment, I guess.

“Only if I can sound like your best friend, who thinks you’re a terrible dork.”

“Deal.” He grins. “Anyway. It’s Thai time!”

“Can we call it anything other than Thai time? It sounds like you’re just stuttering out the word time.”

“This one isn’t negotiable, no.” He looks over my clothes critically. “Guess this is as good as we’re going to get.”

“Until you get me in the chapel,” I say absentmindedly as I stand and brush lint off of my jeans.

“Someday,” he says lightly. “All right. I call driving.”

That’s one of those things that makes you love K.O. He’s a really considerate person. He knows I hate driving, so he always offers to do it, but in a way that makes it seem like he’s not doing it just for my sake. 

We don’t really talk about much important while we drive to the Thai restaurant a few miles away—not the closest to either of our apartments, but definitely the best—but sometimes that’s kind of nice too. You can’t really have a life-changing conversation every time you talk with someone, especially not someone who knows you as well as K.O. knows me. 

The conversation lulls, in the comfortable sort of way that doesn’t require talking, and I remember.

_After getting pizza, he asked for my number. I didn’t really think much of it until he said, “So, can I ask you out on another date sometime?”_

_Everything just froze, and then I said, “Oh, I’m—not—” I paused there, not able to articulate exactly what I wasn’t. Inclined towards dating? Normal? “I’m demiromantic. So.”_

_You know how you sometimes only know you’ve done something that will change your life years after you’ve done it? This wasn’t like that. As soon as I said those words, I felt my life shift almost tangibly._

_K.O. blushed again, not in the delicate way he had earlier, but the deep red of embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. I just assumed—”_

_“No, I’m sorry,” I said, and I was, and I would be. I didn’t know then that I would fall in love with him so completely, but I did know that I had missed out on something._

_“Well—as friends, then. You seem cool, is all,” he said, because K.O. always managed to save me, from the very beginning. “I’d like to get to know you better.”_

_“Yeah,” I said, relieved. “That sounds good.”_

_There was so much I didn’t know back then. About K.O., about myself. So this is the story, more or less, of me and my best friend, and how I came to know all that I needed to love him._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this entire chapter is backstory which means it's all in italics which i know is a bit hard to read but idk any way else to delineate it? ;;;

_When K.O. first held my hand, it was the second time we met, and I was shaking in a corner of the physical science building._

_I’m kind of prone to anxiety attacks. You’d think someone who has them as often as I do would know what to do when they have one, but I think it was pretty clear to all the people who passed by me that day that I had not yet learned how._

_I don’t even remember that clearly what set me off, but I do remember running out of my classroom gasping for air, and I remember searching wildly for the closest corner, and I remember rocking back and forth curled up on the ground and scratching my hands like it would get rid of whatever was wrong with me._

_People don’t really know how to deal with people having anxiety attacks, especially if they don’t know them. Every once in a while, someone will ask you if you’re okay in the way that really means ‘please say yes so I don’t have to deal with you’, and every once in a while somebody will stay when you say you’re not and try and tell you things will be okay, which is usually something you already know. But today wasn’t one of those days, at least not yet. I could feel the stares of people as they shuffled past, their curiosity and pity, and it only made me shake more, curl up tighter._

_“Well, fancy bumping into you again,” a bemused voice came from in front of me. “It’s almost like fate, yeah?”_

_I’m not too good with faces, but you don’t see many bald people on campus wearing period clothing either, so I recognized K.O. pretty quickly. Honestly, my first reaction was irritation. Like, I have stuff to do right now, if you haven’t noticed. Busy wondering if the world is ending._

_As it turned out, though, he actually hadn’t noticed, because the tone of his voice quickly turned to concern. “Oh, whoa. Okay. Do you want space right now?”_

_That isn’t a question I get often, and not really something I had ever considered. I thought about it, then shook my head._

_“Gotcha.” I could hear him kneeling down next to me, and I heard him rustling, but I didn’t know what he was aiming for until I felt him take one of my hands in a firm grip. “Hey now. You’ll regret that later.”_

_It was true, technically. Presumptuous, but true. I hated scratching my hands. I kept my head buried in my knees, focusing on the feeling of his hand in mine._

_“I’ve never really liked coffee,” he said suddenly, and I looked up at him with pure confusion in my eyes. He laughed, and I noticed how his eyes crinkled at the edges when he did so. It was nice. “Bear with me, all right? I don’t like coffee, don’t like how it tastes or anything. But I really needed to stay up earlier this week, right? So I went to a coffee place and told them to make me the most caffeinated drink they had.”_

_I was still confused, but his voice was soothing and I was curious, so I kept listening, centering myself around his hand and voice._

_“They didn’t even blink an eye. Probably get that request a lot. Anyway, I waited for them to make it, and when it was ready I loaded it up with sugar and cream, and then I drank the whole thing in like two gulps.”_

_I tilted my head, but when he didn’t continue immediately, I waved with my hand for him to continue._

_His eyes crinkled up again, and he said, “Next thing I know, I’m down an entire cup of coffee, and I can’t feel half of my face. But I’m still just as tired as ever!”_

_I huffed quietly. I could tell what he was doing now. He was trying to distract me with crappy coffee stories. It was working though, so I didn’t really mind._

_“Ow, okay, tough crowd. How about…okay, wanna hear about the time that I slid off the roof of a house? I mean, it was a plastic play house, but I still skinned my knee. My sister had just gotten a first aid kit, see, and she wanted to test it out, so she dared me to launch myself off the house, and I was a gullible kid, so I totally did it.”_

_That earned a snort. I could totally see him doing that. He beamed. “Okay, you like stories of child humiliation? There’s also the time I got on the roof—actual roof this time—and my mom caught me—”_

_By the time he was done telling stories, my breathing had slowed and I was in my post-anxiety-attack state of numbness._

_He patted my hand a couple of times, then let go. I could say something cheesy, like how I missed the feeling of it after it was gone, but honestly it was sort of sweaty. “All good?”_

_“Fine,” I said. Words don’t really come to me after anxiety attacks. “Thanks.”_

_“No problem. I have cookies in my backpack if you want some. Get your sugar up or whatever.”_

_“No.”_

_“Good, because I really didn’t want to part with them. I love cookies.”_

_That surprised a smile out of me._

_“You have a great smile.” He held his hands up immediately. “Like, no romo, just saying.”_

_If I had the words back then, I might have said that his smile was even better than mine—like sunshine after rain, breaking across what otherwise might have been an intimidating face and transforming it into something beautiful._

_But instead I just gave him a thumbs up._

_“All right. You good? I have a class to get to.”_

_(It wasn’t until later, when I memorized his class schedule, that I realized that he had actually skipped the first fifteen minutes of that class to be with me.)_

_I gave him another thumbs up, and he smiled. “Cool. I’ll text you later, maybe?”_

_I nodded, waved goodbye as he hitched up his backpack and walked away._

_It’s like I said—he always saves me, always has. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’ll ever have the opportunity to save him back. Even the score a little._

_But probably not._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh twitch my child if only you realized he feels the exact same way about you

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! my tumblr is [here](http://anuninterestingperson.tumblr.com) if u ever want to talk or see more about these beautiful children!


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